Workplace Design Improvement for Cable Tray Production in an Electrical Equipment Company: A Lean Perspective

Abstract

Workplace ergonomics deals with designing or arranging work areas, products and systems so that they fit the people who use them and eliminate wastes associated with poor layout and physical environment. Elimination of ergonomic wastes in production lends itself to lean manufacturing applications. The study is not an attempt to assess a production process using the lens of lean manufacturing but aims at identifying relationships between lean elements and physical environmental factors in the context of workplace design that affects worker performance. Specifically, the setting of the study is in an electrical equipment company in which the lean elements of waste volume, workspace dimension, operating time and plant layout are analyzed together with the ergonomic aspect of work environment that include the factors of light intensity, temperature level and noise. The core idea is to find significant relationships between the two sets of factors with the end in view of improving workforce performance in terms of labor productivity, throughput, number of accidents and workers' attendance. The study is capped with the development of a model for analyzing and improving workplace design, facility layout and worker performance.